SEC Probes Xero Mobile

And so it begins…Xero Mobile has announced that it has been “notified by a local office of the SEC that the agency “was conducting an informal inquiry relating to certain aspects of the company’s business.” Warning flags have been raised by some bloggers because of the involvment in Xero of several executives who were involved in the Gizmondo disaster. The UK’s Times Online has some specific details of the SEC request, claiming “It wants to know exactly what investors are being told to persuade them to put cash into the venture, according to correspondence seen by The Sunday Times. And the regulator wants to know what commissions and payments are being made to individuals responsible for the fundraising. The SEC told Xero to hand over information by last weekend.”
The going rate appears to be one minute of talk time for one minute of ads (for Virgin Mobile USA), but Xero is promising 1-5 free minutes per 20-30 second ad. The issue is not just whether people will watch it, but how much companies are willing to pay and how many companies are willing to pay. It’s not going to go down very well if there’s only enough ad inventory for one or two free minutes per week… however, if the ad inventory is there and the ads are actually interesting to watch (stop laughing) it could be a big hit.